OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: Ohio and The Underground Railway-- Pt 1A
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Darlene E. Kelley
http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374
December 3, 1999
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Historical Collections of Ohio
Diaries of S. J. Kelly
Plains Dealer
Know Your Ohio
by Darlene E. Kelley
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Ohio and The Underground Railway-- Pt 1A

The Underground Railroad Era in Ohio lasted from 1800-1863. During that
time,
Washington County, Ohio bordered Wood County, " western " Virginia,
along the Ohio River boundry between the North and the South. The Ohio
River was ---
The Mason-Dixon Line !
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During the Underground Railroad Era of United States history, roughly
1800-1865, the Mason-Dixon Line was the political and ideological
boundary between the Northern Free States from the Southern Slavocracy
States. The Mason-Dixon Line was originally established in 1667, to
settle a disputed boundary between the two English colonies; Maryland
and Pennsylvania. The line derived its name from the two British
astronomers, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who completed the survey.

Initially the Mason-Dixon Line had nothing to do with the issue of
slavery, as slavery was then a legal practice in Pennsylvania, just as
slavery was a legal practice in all English colonies of North America.
Pennsylvania didn't completely abolish slavery until after the American
Revolution around 1783.
 
Between 1780-1820 the Mason Dixon Line gradually became the political
boundary between the free states of the North and the slave states of
the South. In 1820, during debates in the U.S. Congress over the
Missouri Compromise, the term Mason-Dixon Line was first used to
describe the boundary. From that time forward, the Mason Dixon Line
included the boundary that extended between Pennsylvania and the slave
states of Maryland and Virginia; west to, and down along the Ohio River
all the way to Cairo, lllinois. The Mason Dixon line formed the northern
boundary of slavocracy between the states of Ohio and Virginia, Ohio and
Kentucky, Indiana and Kentucky, and Kentucky and Illinois. In fact was
in effect, the front line in the long battle between slave owners of the
south and the Underground Railroad of the North.

As early as 1776, the settlers of western Virginia had petitioned the
second Continental Congress in Philadelphia for a separate government.
It became increasingly clear during the early 1800's that, whereas
eastern Virginia shared the social and economic interests of the South,
the western part of the state-- because of both geography and ethnic
heritage-- had more in common with the North. Still slavery was a part
of the culture in western Virginia.

Compared to other places in the South, the slave population in western
Virginia counties was always sparse. Slaves in western Virginia were
mostly concentrated along large streams and rivers where soil conditions
favored plantation agriculture. There were also slaves used in mining
and other industrial pursuits. In the Mid- Ohio River Valley, slaves
worked on plantations and farms located near or on the Ohio River.
Because of this particular geographical location, slavery in Wood
County, Virginia was closely observed and some of the conditions
surrounding slavery were documented by newspapers in Maretta, the county
seat of Washington County, Ohio.

It was evident that the familiarity with slavery, acquired by early
settlers in Washington County, Ohio, began the practice of encouraging
and assisiting fugitive slaves to escape from slavery in western
Virginia. Based on this practice, by 1810, settlers in Ohio with
anti-slavery views, rapidly established a cooperative relay/referral
system that extended from the Ohio River all the way across Ohio to Lake
Erie. From this beginning, the organization of the Underground Railway
was pretty well established by 1820, but the state wide popular support
for the UR was not achieved until after 1840.

All over the Ohio, the Underground Railroad became a vast system of safe
houses, called Stations, and travel routes called trails,and Northern
abolitionists called Conductors, to help fugitive slaves from the south
reach freedom in Canada. 
This is the history of the Underground Railroad in the mid--Ohio River
Valley, a point along the Ohio River for fugitive slaves from western
Virginia to begin their trip across Ohio to Canada.

From 1619 through the end of the Revolutionary War (1776-1783 ), slavery
was a legal institution in all English Colonies of North America, but
the number of slaves was much greater in the southern colonies, where
large scale plantation type agricultural prevailed in the warmer
climate. These plantations required a large dependable force of laborers
to operate. Slavery thus became the foundation of the plantation
agricultural system. In turn, the plantation system became the
foundation of the southern culture from the 17th through the middle of
the 18th centuries.

From the time that Africans were first enslaved in the English Colonies
of North America, they had resisted, but for most slaves, resistance was
futile under the discriminatory colonial laws which legitimized slavery.
The foundation of slavery in North America was rooted in the European
custom of indenture. Indenture was a tyre of legal contract whereby a
free person could be bound to serve the owner of the contract for a
maxim number of years, usually seven. When their obligatory term had
been fulfilled, the servant was released from indenture, and allowed to
pursue his fortunes as a free citizen. Indentured servents proved to be
expensive laborer, and indentured had many rights under English Common
Law.

It soon became apparent to tobacco planters in the Tidewater Region
around Jamestown. Virginia, that they needed more control of their
agricultural force. To accomplish this, the planters imported Africans
and created an artificial social class of slaves, based solely on skin
color. In order to justify the perpetuation of slavery, the rich tobacco
tycoons had to portray Africans as people with less than human
qualities. Of course under the controlled conditions of slavery, this
was easy to accomplish, since those Africans were unfortunate enough to
become slaves in America, naturally had no knowledge of the English
language, no knowledge of English Common Law and no knowledge of English
culture. In America, only people with black skin could be held as
slaves, and black skin readily identified a slave, making it easier to
control the slave population.

To keep African slaves ignorant, colonial slave laws were enacted to
prevent them from being educated in European customs. The central goal
of the slave owning class was to keep slaves in perpetual ignorance, so
they would not have the means to resist. Every aspect of a slave's
existance was controlled to the smallest detail, from a slaves birth
until his/her death. The purpose behind slavery was to get the maximum
amount of labor for the minimum amount of expense and no resistance.

There was nothing subtle about the conditions that maintained the
institution of slavery. As far as the slaves was concerned, a very real
threat of violence hung over the slave culture like an omnipresent fog.
Slaves were punished for the smallest infraction of the rules.
Rebellious slaves were severly beaten and tortured to death, when other
slaves were forcd to wittness the punishment to discourage furthur
resistence.  The fear of slaves reprisal weighed so heavily upon the
conscience of slave owners, they became their own victims to the brutal
slave culture.

Nearly all slave owners were white people, but not all white people were
slave owners. Never the less slave owners were the powerful political
and social class of their time. As a consequence of being a minority,
the slave owning class had to expend great effort to gain and hold the
support of the non-slave owning class of whites in case of a slave
rebellion. This of course was accomplished by inventing and perpetuating
the myth of racial superiority, without a hint of freedom.

From the earliest days of the African slave trade in the 16th century,
there were some Europeans, especially those with clergy backgrounds,
that recognized the inherent evils and not so subtle brutality of
slavery. This did not necessarily mean that they loved the Africans per
se, it simply meant they recognized the obvious fact that African people
were human beings, and according to the principals of Christian
religion, no human being deserved to be treated like a draft animal. It
was from this concept that the Abolitionist Movement would later spawn,
but still it took centuries for the Anti-slavery Movement to gain enough
support to end slavery in most European countries, by the beginning of
the American Revolutionary War (1776-1783 ).

Many people in the former English Colonies of North America, including
the slaves, expected that slavery in the new United States would be
abolished very soon after the Revolutionary War had been concluded in
1783. In fact, during the dark days of that war, General George
Washington had decreed that any slave who fought for American
Indepenence would be freed. Consequently , Northern States individually
began implementing various methods for emancipating the slaves in those
states as early as 1780. Some states adopted immediate emancipation
plans, while other states adopted plans with a more gradual approach to
emancipation.

As the laws for emancipating slaves were temporarily relaxed in the
euphoria of freedom that gripped the new Nation right after the war,
even in some Southern States, particularly Virginia, some slaves were
emancipated. Then the Southern States as a group began to reject the
idea of abolishing slavery. After Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in
1793, slavery in the Southern States became more entrenched than it had
been under the English Colonial system. Many of the slaves in the South,
that had been promised freedom, especially those that had served in the
Revolution were not freed as expected.
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To be continued in part B.